A straggly, mushy, pee-stained lawn was the bane of my existence for a long time. The grass turf gets very little sun, and the combination of that plus my elderly incontinent dog made the lawn something that I avoided walking through—let alone encouraging my children to play on.

So I jumped on the artificial grass turf bandwagon in a big way, encouraged by landscapers who emphasized the water savings and probably didn’t know much about the true environmental impacts.